Hi, folks!
It’s been a busy summer! I skipped GenCon this year in order to take my family out East for a nice long visit with our relatives. While we were out there, I made a point of taking my kids to Washington DC in order to see the memorials. Since I’ve been living in Washington state for fourteen years now, my kids haven’t ever seen DC before. It’s one of those things that every kid should have a chance to see, I think. We also visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Capitol, and the National Archives (which was very cool, by the way). We also had the chance to visit some of the historical sites around Richmond, Virginia, including the Confederate White House and the Richmond National Battlefield—specifically, Cold Harbor and the Tredegar Iron Works. Fascinating stuff for me, but I’m a history buff. My teenage daughters weren’t quite so thrilled.
Things are fairly quiet in D&D land for me. I’ve been keeping my hands in DDi with a series of articles called “Nerathi Legends,” each describing one of the territories on the Conquest of Nerath map. My idea is to capture some of the magic of the old Minarian Legends articles that appeared in Dragon magazine way back in the day, and stretch some creative muscles we don’t get to use very often. My next publication will be Player’s Option: Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, which will be out early next year. (This book went through a few title options, so if you saw it as something else, our apologies.) I worked on it with Rob Schwalb, and it’s currently wrapping up development. I’m eagerly awaiting its release!
WINDOWSILL NAVY SAILS AGAIN
Speaking of eagerly awaiting… Last week I received my “one of everything” set for War at Sea 6 (Surface Action), and deployed them on my windowsill to share them with my co-workers. I like the looks of the set; we have some ships that have very nice paint jobs, and I think there’s a good mix of much-needed units. I plan to run a short set of Opening Salvoes starting in a couple of weeks to preview some of the units and whip up a little excitement out there.
Set 6: Surface Action marks the debut of minesweepers, which the game has needed for several sets now. In researching a couple of likely candidates, I discovered that minesweepers weren’t just for getting rid of minefields—they were also very useful as escorts, and were well equipped for anti-submarine warfare. This set also revisits some Set 1 pieces that are in high demand. For example, we’re short on dive bombers and torpedo bombers to fly off all those carriers, so we printed a new version of the Kate, painted in its very distinctive Pearl Harbor strike scheme with a big red tail. Oh, and that Elite Zero I mentioned a couple of months back? Yes, it has Escort.
AIR FORCE MINIS
Speaking of minis, we’ve got a set of paint masters for our upcoming Angels 20 set of Axis & Allies Air Force Miniatures in the office. They’re very impressive! Even if you don’t care to play the game, you’ll want them just for their collectability. We hit one unfortunate snag: The A6M2 Zero came back at the wrong size (it was noticeably smaller than it was supposed to be). After some soul-searching over whether to drop the Zero from the set, correct it, or let it go, we decided that we needed to fix it. That’s caused a bit of a delay, but we felt it was the right thing to do. After all, what would Flying Tigers and Wildcats tangle with if we didn’t have a Zero in the set? However, by way of an apology for the wait, we’ll present a demonstration of the game on Saturday, November 12th, at the Museum of Flight here in Seattle. The Northwest Historical Miniatures Gaming Society puts on a nice exhibition every year there; we’re going to bring some planes to show off and maybe have a dogfight or two.
That’s all for this time, everybody. In a couple-three weeks I’ll be back with our first Set 6 Opening Salvo!
